K. I. S. S.  –it’s a well worn acronym “Keep it simple s____” (you can fill this one in) –it’s the advice given by every speech teacher I ever had, and one which we all wish would be applied to the tax code.

22,400,000. The number of results from a Google search on “Managed Services”.  Managed Services is getting more and more attention and support.  Research firms, (Gartner, AMR, Forrester, to name a few) and academic centers –Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, are publishing their findings.  Organizations Automotive, Retail, Financial Services, Consumer Products, and Manufacturing are adopting a ‘Managed Services’ model as part of their business to business strategies .   

SaaS,  PaaS,  B2Bi,  SOA, Hosting, EDI, XML, RONET, ISO, AS2, https, etc.   With all the acronyms  and all the results, can we really KISS Managed Services?  

Sure – by focusing on the values.    All of the functions, capabilities, drivers, and demands around managed services are contained in 5 basic values:  Reliability, Security, Interoperability, Scalability and Supportability.  Each value is really the answer to a basic question – as I’ve listed below

1)      Reliable:  Is it working?

2)      Secure:   Is it safe?

3)      Interoperable: Can everyone use it?

4)      Scalable:  Will it grow?

5)      Supportable:  If it breaks, (or bends) can I fix it?

There’s a lot of literature about what comprises these each of these values, and multiple approaches to providing them.  By driving to these values MS and KISS come together.

My fellow blogger Melanie has been waxing eloquently on both the state of grace which can be achieved by effective B2B data management only to reminded by another fellow blogger John about how far there still is to go in the integration space.

Both of these posts re-enforce (and refine with far more eloquence than I can muster) the motto of B2B Managed Services  – Make it Work.

John’s right there is a long way to go, and I was quite surprised to read the results of a recent Survey   that when asked what the #1 technology used to synchronize (sounds like integrate to me) with customers on orders forecast and industry status – the #1 answer (34%) was e-mail.  The #2 answer was (32%) was EDI so perhaps that means e-mail is used to handle the exceptions arising from the gaps still inherent in using EDI.

Since EDI still represents 85-90% of B2B transaction volume (Forrester Research 6-July 2007) the journey towards the kingdom of data heaven may be longer  than any of us think.   But take heart!  There is a road to get there.  It’s called Managed Services – using Data Transmission and Data Translation (the foundational components of B2B Managed Services) organization will be collaborate to exchange their business data , mange it’s quality and be able to take the steps to integrate into their business process.